Marxism and Secular Humanism:
An Excavation and Reappraisal
Edwin A. Roberts
Introduction
The special issue of Nature, Society and Thought (NST),
“Religion and Freethought” (volume 9, no. 2 [1996]), is a
commendable contribution to a dialogue long overdue within
progressive intellectual circles. As a longtime active member of
the skeptical and secular humanist community, on the one hand,
and at the same time a proponent of dialectics and historical
materialism on the other, I have often been frustrated by the lack
of engagement between the two traditions. In my experience, a
general disrespect exists among secularists for Marxism, which
often is dismissed as a dogmatic or outmoded belief system
similar to religion.1 I have also witnessed a general disinterest on
the part of Marxists for secularism, which often is seen as
providing nothing new or interesting to their own perspectives.
In many ways both of these attitudes are the result of misunderstandings about what these two traditions actually stand for, and
I believe that a more active dialogue between the two schools is
necessary.2
As a first step in this direction, the contributions in the NST
special issue are quite encouraging. Two important articles are
Norm R. Allen Jr.’s critical intervention into the important topic
of religion and Black intellectuals and Lotz and Gold’s discussion of religion and the new physics (1996). As an African
American, I appreciate Allen’s comments on Stephen Carter and
Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 12, no. 2 (1999)
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Louis Farrakhan, which are insightful and long overdue in this
context. Also commendable is his sharp analysis of the vacuity
and confusion in the theology espoused by many Black intellectuals. Lotz and Gold’s review essay on the new “God-seeking”
in cosmology and physics is important because it deals with an
issue of pressing concern to many skeptics and humanists irrationalism within science itself. Their essay helps to show that
such irrationalism cannot be fought simply by reference to
extreme doubt or pure empiricism. Lotz and Gold make a good
case for the claim that only a critical methodology like dialectics
can enlighten us on how contradictory patterns of stability and
disequilibrium can coexist in nature without encouraging irrationalist speculation.
The most important essay in the collection is “The Challenge
of Explanation” by Fred Whitehead (1996). It is stimulating,
informed, and thoughtful on many levels, and sets a tone
indicative of the direction I believe this debate should take. As
an attempt to establish a firm groundwork for a Marxist engagement with the issue of religion and freethought, however, his
discussion is lacking or incomplete, I believe, in crucial areas.
I propose to continue this discussion by addressing some of
the important weaknesses, points of contention, and possible
areas of convergence existing between Marxism and secular
humanism. In what follows, I shall excavate much valuable but
largely forgotten or overlooked material concerning this issue,
and reappraise the chances of developing a better understanding
among adherents of both schools.
Four areas need greater investigation in order to advance our
understanding of the relationship between Marxism and secular
humanism. The first is the critical analysis of scientific explanations of religious phenomena. The second is a more through
evaluation of specifically Marxist studies and critiques of religion. The third concerns the clarification of the role atheism
plays in understanding the ontological, epistemological, and
historical status of religion. The fourth is the reevaluation of the
history of humanist and Marxist encounters, with a focus on the
reasons why a convergence between these two essentially progressive intellectual trends has, to this point, proved so illusive.
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The problem of explanation redirected
Whitehead attempts in his essay to address the paradox of
how Marxists can be so successful in advancing a scientific theory of society and history and yet have so much difficulty in
developing a similar theory of religion. The subtext of this question is the notion that this problem relates to a general inability to
overcome religion as a practice within a scientific (Enlightenment), civilization (Whitehead 1996, 135–6). Although I do not
think it necessarily follows that if one can explain a phenomenon, one can overcome it, I think that, even with the added factors of need, desire, and the will to do so, it is impossible to
overcome a thing that has been poorly explained or misunderstood.
Given this premise, it is important for any scientific outlook
such as Marxism, which seeks not only to understand events, but
to resolve social and historical contradictions within them, to
confront and overcome anomalies such as the one to which
Whitehead points. I would also stipulate, however, that such an
analysis cannot be limited to religion, but must consist of a unified theory to explain the persistence of all forms of irrational,
pseudoscientific, and antiscientific thinking and belief. Here I
find both the examples cited by Whitehead inadequate. He cites
Guthrie and Schumaker’s studies as possible places where
Marxists might begin to build a more complex understanding of
religion, yet both works are too narrowly focused on an essentially psychological concept of religion. The idea that religion is
essentially related either to anthromorphy (that is, projection of
personal need or drive to supernatural belief) or dissociation is
too individually and therapeutically oriented to be of much use in
a Marxist theory of religion, as I think Whitehead realizes (147).
As a more fruitful alternative for a Marxist engagement with
a contemporary secular humanist theory of religion, I suggest
Paul Kurtz’s magisterial Transcendental Temptation (1991).
Kurtz, an emeritus professor of philosophy at SUNY/Buffalo, is
a leading figure in the contemporary humanist movement. His
book, which attempts a unified critique of both religion and the
paranormal, deals with an impressive range of topics from both a
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historical and philosophical perspective. It includes critiques of
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as well as such phenomena as
spiritualism, extrasensory perception, reincarnation, astrology,
and UFOs.
Kurtz’s thesis is that a human propensity for delusion exists,
manifested in a twofold process in which conjurors and phoney
prophets first seek to delude an already gullible public into
accepting their (false) claims to have tapped into the powers of
some otherworldly realm. Then, Kurtz argues, on another level,
these claims are effective because humans desire to accept forms
of “magical thinking” that promise transcendence from ordinary
reality (Kurtz 1991, 23–5). The effect of this process is to undermine people’s ability to develop and use critical reasoning skills.
Thus, he maintains, the struggle against the transcendental temptation is crucial in a society based on reason and independent
judgment (xii-xiii).
In support of his thesis, Kurtz provides some fascinating
evidence drawn from both historical and religious sources indicating that, given modern knowledge, the prophets of the three
great world religions Jesus, Moses, and Muhammad all
behaved (or were said to have behaved), in a manner akin to
magicians, or what we today would recognize as flimflam artists
or showmen (130–5, 177–8, 211–15). This, together with the
highly irrational and even demagogic nature of their messages,
Kurtz argues, must have exerted a powerful appeal on their followers (168, 193, 217). Kurtz sees this power to fool, combined
with the ability and willingness of many to be fooled, as
dangerous and in need of criticism, not only in religion, but in
pseudoscientific beliefs such as ESP and UFO-abduction stories.
Kurtz’s work in this area is outstanding as a historical and
logical refutation of religious and paranormal beliefs. Nevertheless, I see within it room for improvement in a specifically
Marxist direction. Kurtz believes that the transcendental temptation can be confronted by educating people in a combination of
skepticism, the scientific method, and what he calls “critical
intelligence.” Commendable as this is, his understanding of what
it entails is not concrete enough. We cannot assume that by
increasing quantitatively people’s thinking skills and abilities we
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change the qualitative content and sources of their information.
Real critical intelligence needs direction and purpose; it is not
just a tool, but a weapon. Often even those who know how to use
it refuse to do so, because they do not understand the ends to
which they are being asked to employ it.
On the question of the scientific stance itself, we need to ask
what we think science reveals about the world. Influenced by
pragmatism, Kurtz’s presentation of the scientific method vacillates between historicist theories, such as Thomas Kuhn’s concept of scientific paradigms, and various positivist conceptions
of verifiability and falsifiability, like those of Hume and Karl
Popper. Each, he claims, shows the advantage of a scientific
approach (Kurtz 1991, 45–7). This claim ignores the fact that
these theories are not only contradictory, but exist in conscious
opposition to each other. Fundamentally, based on the epistemic
core of their claims, if Kuhn is correct, then Popper is wrong.
One of them is therefore presenting an ideology of science just
as corrupting of our understanding of reality as any other false
belief. These types of conflicts are regularly seized upon by irrationalists as proof of the indeterminacy of scientific theory, and
thus should be avoided in favor of concrete and specific methodological principles.
Recent Marxist theory provides an example, I believe, of a
conception of the scientific method that surpasses the defects
inherent in both the historicist or positivist views of science. The
theory is called “dialectical critical realism,” and is developed by
the British Marxist philosopher Roy Bhaskar. It is not necessary
for the purposes of this essay to summarize the entire theory,
which is highly complex.3 What is relevant is to extract one of its
a central tenants, a concept that Bhaskar calls “transcendental
realism.” I believe this concept not only can help to illuminate
the nature of Kurtz’s transcendental temptation, but also can
point to solutions not conceived of in Kurtz’s own analysis.
Bhaskar argues that it is actually a necessary part of reality
that we use our intelligence in an attempt to overcome (transcend) it. He claims this is so because even our most limited
attempts to comprehend events reveal how transfactual tendencies exist within relatively enduring structures (1989, 91–92).
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Hence, no matter how normal or stable things appear, we realize,
once we reflect on them, that they do change, and are in fact
changing all the time. Yet all of our understanding is predicated
on the reality of events being as we currently perceive them. It is
therefore in the overcoming of the contradictions between what
we have been conditioned to know (ideology), and what our
thinking reveals about the limits of what we know (criticism),
that true understanding and hence positive action (making history), become possible (184–88).
This type of dialectical perspective reveals that two types of
mystification operate in human thought. One believes too much
of what it perceives, and reflects too little on what it believes
(irrationalism). The other believes too little about what it perceives, and conceives too narrowly based on what is believable
(positivism). What is missing in both perspectives is a clear
understanding of the dialectic between the acceptance of a false
belief and the reality that encourages this belief.
Kurtz’s transcendental temptation is too narrowly defined.
People have always sought to transcend to a new reality; the
problem is in not understanding that this new reality must be
rooted in the concrete potential of people to reshape their actual
lives in the world. When our imagination or understanding is
limited by perspectives that teach us that such transcendence is
impossible or is itself an irrational impulse (the function of all
dominant ideologies), it encourages the seeking of transcendence
in ever more fantastic and otherworldly ways. It is only a critical
methodology focused on not just understanding reality, but on
changing it, that will prove effective in dealing with this paradox.
Another area dealt with by Kurtz in which Marxists might be
able to improve on his insights into the nature of religion concerns the status of the critique of religious belief as a form of
truth or means of understanding the world. Kurtz claims that his
stance as a humanist is influenced by Socrates, Marx, Dewey,
William James, and Sidney Hook (Kurtz 1991, 6). With the
exception of James, these figures are united in their definitive
atheism. Yet the character of their atheism differs considerably.
Dewey even argues that we can refute the content of religious
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beliefs while keeping alive the term “God,” as a symbol of cultural solidarity (Dewey 1934). Given such dynamics, the question remains: in moving from a transcendental idealism (religion)
to a transcendental realism (Marxism/humanism), must one
develop an active atheistic consciousness? Or will a more
rational approach to belief necessarily follow from learning an
accurate sociohistorical account of the nature of religion? These
issues will be addressed in the next two sections.
Confrontations between Marxism and religion
One of the missing elements in Whitehead’s discussion is an
analysis of the wider Marxist tradition of studying religion,
beyond the work of Marx and Engels. The critical study of religion has played a large role within all tendencies in Marxist theory almost from the beginning. For example, one of the most
widely read and influential works of classical Marxism was Karl
Kautsky’s 1908 Foundations of Christianity (1953). A useful
and ambitious overview of this subject is David McLellan’s
Marxism and Religion (1987). Focused on Christianity,
McLellan’s work is an attempt to summarize and assess nearly
every major Marxist theory of religion from Marx to liberation
theology. The book presents informative factual summaries of
the works of particular figures and schools of thought, but suffers from some major analytic weaknesses. In an attempt to build
links between Marxism and Christianity, McLellan ventures a
number of questionable claims aimed at downgrading the qualitative elements of Marxism’s historical and theoretical critique
of religion. Such claims cannot stand up to critical scrutiny.
McLellan shows that Marxists’ studies of religion have generally taken two forms: descriptive, in which religion is studied
as a variable within a dominant mode of production; and evaluative, in which religion is judged to be a form of alienation, to be
overcome by the emergence of a new form of society that has
itself overcome the roots of religious alienation (McLellan 1987,
166). In assessing these positions, McLellan claims that
Marxism’s evaluative critique of religion is highly questionable,
while the descriptive studies of most Marxists, when critical of
religion, are tentative at best, and at worst out of date. As a
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practicing Catholic, McLellan clearly objects to the view that
religion is an illusory phenomenon rooted in human alienation,
and thus destined to pass away in the transition to an unalienated
society. Against this view, he maintains that no adequate political or social theory can exclude a role for religion in its view of
the future of humanity. This is because, according to McLellan,
“in one way or another religion has been a deep and enduring
aspect of human activity” (5).
To this argument one could respond that there have existed
many enduring elements of human activity, including negative
ones, such as cruelty, murder, and self-delusion. This does not
mean we should either accept them as natural, or resign ourselves to them as everlasting aspects of the human condition. For
example, if it were possible to show that a specific mode of
social or political life is more conducive to the spreading of a
practice such as cruelty, then it would be perfectly legitimate to
argue that the negation of that form of society, or politics, might
also negate the intensity and or duration of that practice. This is
the logical essence of the Marxist conjecture about the possible
disappearance of religion in an unalienated society, and
McLellan’s claim does not refute it.
Most of McLellan’s criticisms are directed at the descriptive
element of Marxist theories of religion. Still, even here he argues
again that Marxists have ignored the positive role of religion in
human history specifically as a shaper of human communities.
On this subject, he recommends that Marxists might learn more
about the nature of religion if they adopted the perspectives of
classical sociologists, such as Durkheim or Weber. Both saw
religion as a necessary aspect of human consciousness, either
because it helps promote social solidarity (Durkheim) or because
it rationalizes modes of social legitimacy (Weber) (McLellan
1987, 162). However, the defense McLellan provides for this
claim is weak and evasive in that he attempts to argue that both
the Durkheimian and Weberian theories of religion are compatible with historical materialism while providing evidence that this
may not be necessary. For example, in weighing the merits of
Marxist historical studies of religion, he admits that the empirical
evidence is quite good, and points to two famous Marxist studies
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of Calvinism and Methodism that give “considerable support to
the general Marxist thesis about the nature and function of religion historically and politically” (McLellan 1987, 167–68). In
fact, McLellan’s only strong indictment of Marxists is that they
have had difficulty in explaining millennialist Christianity (168).
Yet given the unique nature and minority status of such beliefs,
this hardly counts as a general indictment of Marxism’s descriptive account of religion.
The real failure of McLellan’s approach to this subject is
revealed in one of his concluding remarks. Marxism needs religion, as a supplement, he argues, because while Marxism is
addressed to the victors and winners of history, movements like
Christianity focus “on the defeated, the maimed and even the
dead” (171). Although itself questionable, this claim seems to
confirm the essence of one of Marx’s most famous remarks. For
an outlook whose main purpose is to console the dead and
defeated of history is clearly revealed to be the opium of the people. McLellan might respond that if his attempts to build links
between Marxism and religion are questionable, what then is
revealed by focusing on the confrontation between the two? The
answer is that if one is concerned with the logical accuracy and
historical integrity of their theories, then Marxism should be able
to forge much more fruitful connections with secular humanists
than with proponents of any type of theism.
The missing element in McLellan’s study is an analysis of the
confrontation between Marxists and theologists over the content
of their respective ontological and epistemological claims. In
fact, this element seems to be missing from all contemporary
debates on this subject. There was a time, however, when such
confrontations were more prominent; the 1930s was such a
period. An example taken from that decade shows how productive such confrontations can be and why they ought to be
reexamined in any attempt to build understanding between
Marxism and secular humanism.
The Modern Monthly, a prominent progressive interdisciplinary journal of the time, published in 1935 a series of
debates on “Marxism and Religion.” The debates featured the
critic V. F. Calverton and the philosopher Sidney Hook,
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representing Marxism, against the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr
and R. L. Calhoun, defending religion. The fact that this debate
pitted one of the most influential theologians of this century
(Niebuhr) against one of the most noted U.S. Marxists of the
time (Hook) makes it noteworthy in any discussion of the topic.4
Even more important, both sides made contributions that remain
relevant to this day toward our understanding of what separates
these two perspectives.
Niebuhr and Calhoun employ three arguments in defense of
their position: first, that Marxism cannot be seen as separate
from (and therefore superior to), religion, because its own faith
and dogmas reveal it to be itself a religious doctrine. Second,
they argue that Marxism and religion need not be opposed,
because they have common ground on several defining issues,
and thus can help each other. Third, there are areas where religion is clearly superior to Marxism as an explanation of the
human condition, and therefore Marxists should seek the help of
theologians in addressing these areas (Niebuhr 1935; Calhoun
1935).
In beginning their arguments, both men are quick to point out
that the religion they are defending is not what Calhoun called
“institutional or organized religion,” but a “prophetic religion”
(Calhoun 1935, 24). Niebuhr defines prophetic religion as an
attitude toward reality rooted in social purpose and pious reverence (1935, 714). To this definition Calhoun adds, “this is done
so that the world conforms with God’s will” (1935, 25). Anticipating those who would label this a defense of theological
dogmatism, Calhoun argues that “dependence on God’s will is
no more dogmatic than a scientist acting in respect to the laws of
gravity.” How this can be so is not clear, since one is comparing
an unanalyzable abstraction (God’s will), with a perceptible analyzable force of nature. Yet however dubious Calhoun’s analogy,
it was indicative of the level at which both men approached the
subject matter.5
In defending his principal claims against Marxism, Niebuhr
argues that Marxism is really a religious rather than a scientific
system, because its philosophy (dialectical materialism) provides
guarantees that allow Marxists to believe that the world has
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meaning and life a purpose (1935, 713). At the same time, he
claims that Marxism is inferior to religion in being utopian,
because it supports the idea of perfectibility on earth, which for
Niebuhr, “ignores the fallen imperfect nature of man” (714).
Calhoun, while making in essence the same arguments, claims
that Marxism’s principal weakness is its naturalistic perspective,
“which does not allow it to balance human effort with respect for
God’s plan” (1935, 24). He gives as a primary example of this
the failure among Marxists to accept absolutist moral and ethical
standards. Thus, he explains, “Marxists are willing to accept
such things as brutality in pursuit of their ends, because they recognize no absolute sanctions against such behavior” (27). That
Calhoun (a professor of historical theology at Yale), could ignore
the history of religion in using its absolutist moral principles to
justify violence, murder, and torture in pursuit of its ends is intellectual blindness quite representative, unfortunately, of both his
and Niebuhr’s contributions.
Calverton and Hook, although taking different approaches to
the issue, both display such weaknesses in their arguments.
Calverton’s approach is historical, while Hook makes a logical
critique. They converge on two points: first, that Niebuhr and
Calhoun define both religion and Marxism in a conceptually
inadequate way; and second, that nothing they argue affects in
any way the integrity and superiority of Marxism as a method,
philosophy, or science of society (Calverton 1935; Hook 1935).
On the first point, Calverton quotes the humanist philosopher
Corliss Lamont, who points out that Niebuhr’s definition of
religion is so loose and unintelligible that it could not only apply
to Marxism, “but to football, trade unionism and even poetry
societies” (Calverton 1934, 716). As to the second point, Hook
maintains that the Marxism these men speak of is a dogmatic and
emasculated doctrine, inconsistent with Marx’s own life and
works. Dialectical materialism, according to Hook, is not a
philosophy that provides guarantees to the direction of history,
but a method that guides concrete social action (Hook 1935,
20–21). In making a similar point, Calverton adds that even
dogmatic Marxists “who defend the inevitability of communism
and the infallibility of the party,” have been able to make sound
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scientific judgments on other matters based on Marxist theory.
“The same,” he continues, “cannot be said for religious dogmatists of any persuasion” (1935, 716).
In the main, Calverton argues that Marxist theory is in no
need of religion to advance itself. Defending this position, he
outlines an original theory of religion based on historicalmaterialist principles that he had developed at length elsewhere.6
Rejecting the idea that religion and Marxism are compatible
projects, Calverton claims that time has stamped religion, in
form and content, with the defense of reaction, which only intensifies in periods of class stratification and scientific advance.
Whatever exceptions to this there might be, Calverton explains,
“have always faced the wrath of the majority within the religious
community and been suppressed” (1935, 720).
Hook also argues that religion and Marxism are at variance
on a number of critical fronts, and that religion’s own war
against attempts to understand nature, society, and humanity
through the empirical, historical, and experimental standards of
science are irreconcilable with Marxism (1935, 30).7 For the
most part, Hook’s essay concentrates on exploring three areas
where Marxism and religion are in conflict philosophy, ethics,
and politics. Without going over this analysis in its entirety, we
may identify two of Hook’s points as important examples of the
power of his case and thus worth repeating.
First, Hook argues that Marxism does indeed have faith in its
values and principles, but he adds, faith does not equal religious
faith. “The ways and means of realizing a thing can give us a
right to believe our judgments are probably true.” This, he
pointed out, is an act of faith, but not in itself a religious act,
“because it need not involve cosmic certainty or the idea that
one’s dogma is superior to experience or common sense” (Hook
1935, 31). The important point here is the need to avoid the common fallacy of equating a religious interpretation of a human
experience with its actual meaning. That humans hope, dream,
and believe in what has not yet come to pass does not mean they
either accept or need accept that a supernatural force or ideal can
bring these things to fruition.
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On the question of ethics, and the supposed superiority of
religious morality, Hook declares that “piety and absolute reverence for one’s moral standards more often than not leads to
indifference and conservatism” (32). Opposed to this, he defends
basing human behavior on conditional-relational situations, calling for intelligent reflection on how and why standards can and
should be changed. “Frozen dogmatic moral principles,” says
Hook, “do not open our minds toward helping us have courage
in the face of what is unattainable, nor to have the intelligence to
know how to change what we can change.” Hook’s argument is
important because it shows the strength of the critical naturalist
outlook advocated by Marxism in just those areas where religious apologists have always claimed superiority in defending
belief in human potential and in guiding moral judgement.
Hook makes one of his finest points in defining what role
Marxism would view for religion in a world where its dogmas
have been definitively refuted and its power checked. He argues
that Marxists should not seek the eradication of religion, but only
its reduction to a private matter. There it could not be used to
halt or endanger the democratization of social, political, or economic life, and importantly it could not impede the movement
toward the widest possible education in critical thinking (34).
This argument is not unique; it was also the official position of
the pre-1914 Second International. Still, Hook’s defense of it is
an important reminder and clarification of the nature of
Marxism’s own secularism.
One of the most fertile elements of this debate is its exposure
of the appalling nature of religious apologetics as a mode of
intellectual engagement. Niebuhr and Calhoun (while making
essentially the same points), show skill and intelligence, but their
claims for religion are imbued with fallacious reasoning;
dependent on question begging, logic twisting, and vulgar mystifications; and based more on wish fulfillment than the advance
of any cognitively accessible truth claims. Both men show that
they are capable of criticizing the world in realistic terms, but
any claims they make along these lines have only the vaguest
connection to religious doctrines or practices. When they do clarify this connection, as in their reliance on the dogma of the
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imperfection of man, it shows that they cannot envision religious
criticism as having any qualitative effect on the world. We may
conclude that religious dogma, given its conceptual and historical limitations, cannot be seen as helpful in advancing the
revolutionary, scientific, or humanistic criticism of reality advocated by Marxism. This is why Marxism remains in principle
committed to the criticism and overcoming of religion.
Marxism and the question of atheism
As a secular outlook, Marxism has approached the question
of disbelief in at least two distinctive ways. There are those who
argue that Marxism must take the stance of aggressive and vigorous atheism and attempt to stamp out all traces of religious influence. This stance is most identified with Soviet Marxism, with
its authority going back to Lenin and his polemics against godbuilding philosophers and reactionary clericalists (McLellan
1987, 95–98). At the other extreme, there is the claim that Marxism has no need for an active atheism, since as a civilization
advances all traditional modes of expression become enveloped
into the practical needs of that civilization. Thus, under capitalism religion becomes more and more a veil for exchange
relations, and hence a more or less unconscious atheism encompasses our lives. This latter position represents the views
expressed by Marx himself about the future of religion in the
first volume of Capital (1967, 171).
It may seem that these two positions negate each other, but on
a more complex level one can argue that an active critique of
theism complements an understanding that the power of theistic
claims is in a natural state of decline, regardless of the level of
opposition these claims face.
The complexities and contradictions of Western culture over
the past three hundred years provide ample evidence that much
of what Marx thought about religion has come to pass. The question is what has become of our ability to comprehend events
when we live in a culture that has effectively negated religious
belief, even as it obscures this fact by encouraging religious
practices.
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An important attempt to help to understand this dynamic is a
largely overlooked work by the late Michael Harrington, The
Politics at God’s Funeral (1983). The title, echoing a poem by
Heinrich Heine, refers to the widely argued claim that since the
seventeenth century, Western societies and those shaped by them
have been ruled by the logic of a political atheism. God, as unifier and legitimater of power and authority, has been killed, and
according to Harrington, piously buried by his still reverent, but
now agnostic, followers (1983, 3–5). Among the effects of our
not understanding what Harrington calls “God’s Christian
burial” are a crisis of motivated noncoerced obedience, a compulsory hedonism, and the emergence of totalitarianism as a substitute for religious certainty and solidarity (8). As theologians
labor to build a new faith without an actual ontological God, they
leave behind to address the great questions of existence only
those able to comprehend the world as an inverted reality: what
was once certain (God) is now uncertain, and what was once
irrelevant (the world) is now central.
The core of Harrington’s study is a survey of the entire history of Western thought, including philosophy, political theory,
psychology, sociology, history, and theology, from Kant to
Habermas. This survey is both learned and eloquent, and
although one might quibble with interpretations here and there,
his central theme that the history of all modern Western thought
addresses, in one way or another, the death of the political
God is well supported. His conclusion is that only the emergence of a new universalist political morality unifying both
nonbelievers and believers can settle the politics at God’s
funeral. Harrington’s candidate for this new morality is a
renewed, Marxist-influenced, democratic socialism (210).
Another version of this thesis is given, from a different point
of view, by the neo-Aristotelian philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.
In a review of the state of modern theology, MacIntyre argues
that it is dangerous for religious thinkers to assume that atheism
is some minority creed that can be safely ignored as an eccentricity. Instead, he argues, it is the express basis for most people’s
lives although, he adds, this is not a simple thing to understand.
“The problem’s difficulty,” says MacIntyre, “lies in a
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combination of atheism in the practice and life of the vast majority, with the profession of either superstition or theism by the
same majority” (MacIntyre 1971, 26). The real issue is not in
exposing and denouncing this atheism, which few are aware of,
or can comprehend, but in trying “to find out why the creed of
the English is that there is no God and that it is wise to pray to
him from time to time.” Whatever this implies, it is not a theological question.
If we take MacIntyre’s question, and replace the word English with the term modernist, we can identify the fundamental
contradiction that Marxists should be attempting to address in
understanding the role of atheism in contemporary civilization.
This is not just a question of analyzing sloppy thinking or willful
blindness; it is more an issue of what Jürgen Habermas has
termed “communicative irrationality.” This involves the deliberate distortion of rational modes of understanding in favor of an
obscuration that enables us to unify our acceptance of the system
in which we live with the rejection of the values it seems to support (Habermas 1989, 227–28). Through this type of distortion,
many are able to see themselves as spiritual, heaven-centered
beings while acting in a very earthly, material-centered way.
(This is especially evident within the nondenominational Protestant clergy of the United States).
The roots of our understanding of this dynamic and bourgeois
civilization’s need for it lie in Marx and Engels’s critique of the
state of German philosophy in the 1840s. They argue (contrary
to the young Hegelians) that the rational criticism of a mystification or delusion is not enough to overcome it. This is so because,
just as certain concepts arise as a result of their being conducive
to supporting certain modes of social development, entirely different sets of concepts are necessary to hold those relations in
place. When the antinomies of existence begin to expose the
weaknesses of these concepts, ultimate contradictions in this process force them to become more and more removed from actual
social realities. The irony of this process is that as concepts begin
to obscure our comprehension of underlying realities, they
become more effective in holding social relations in place, thus
Marxism and Secular Humanism 193
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impeding our ability to change them without conscious struggle
(Marx and Engels 1976).
Understanding this helps to clarify the meaning behind
Marx’s statement that religion is “the opium of the people.” Religion, Marx was arguing, becomes so effective in combating the
symptoms of real suffering in bourgeois society such as alienation, anomie, and helplessness that it convinces its followers that
no actual cure for the real underlying causes of their suffering is
necessary, or in some cases, even possible. Modifying this perspective somewhat, I would argue that knowing this, one should
not focus directly on the underlying causes of mystifications, as
if they were apparent to all seeing eyes. Instead, one should deal
directly with the power of abstractions to capture and shape our
lives. Those mystified usually see themselves as thinking quite
clearly, because their vision and the mystification have become
unified in their minds. This unity must be undone, but one cannot simply point in the right direction and say, “you are cured!”
To overcome a false vision, one must understand and negate it.
To paraphrase Marx, the struggle against illusions requires
the critique of heaven within (not instead of) the critique of the
earth. Therefore, if ours is an atheistic reality within a mystified
theistic shell, it is necessary for Marxists to become involved in
using their tools to advance criticism and evaluation of the nature
and history of this mystification. In order to accomplish this, it
will be essential to combine the analysis of religion as a social
phenomenon with a critique of the content of theistic beliefs as
historical and philosophical truth claims. This is the essence of
the dual nature of Marxism’s relation to atheism.8
Marxism and the freethought tradition
Freethought has been one the most attractive areas of convergence for radical and secular thinkers in U.S. history. Among the
giants of this tradition who were also major figures of the Left
are Thomas Paine, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Clarence Darrow and (too often overlooked), Robert Ingersoll.9
Although their freethought took many forms, from deism to
atheism, today this tradition is venerated and studied almost
194 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT
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exclusively by secularists. For our purposes, there are two
reasons for mentioning the relations between the progressivism
of these individuals and their commitment to freethought. First,
they were all outstanding public intellectuals, whose criticisms
of religious dogmas are well known. The ability to be a successful public dissenter in such a sensitive area is something well
worth respect and study. Second, none of them was associated
with socialist or Marxist thinking in any significant way. A possible reason for this is that the great freethinkers in general were
very individualistic in orientation, and thus identified with the
outer reaches of liberalism. Their own difficult breaks with pious
upbringings made them very weary of the mass or systematic
belief systems that they often associated with religion.
An important negative aspect of the individualism of the great
freethinkers is that its legacy has left many modern exponents of
freethought too susceptible to the association of Marxism with
dogmatic and discredited offshoots that resemble religions in
form and content, such as Stalinism. In addition, many humanists, in rejecting Marxism, have embraced instead a narrow
empiricism and vulgar positivism as the only philosophical
systems compatible with a scientific outlook. These systems
encourage modes of thinking so antithetical to Marxism’s own
methods that misunderstanding is almost inevitable. All this
notwithstanding, I would argue that the results of these great
misunderstandings can be overcome by a more healthy dialogue
between the two traditions.
The actual record of attempted convergences of Marxism and
secular humanism, however, has not been encouraging. For
example, two of the most influential and well-known American
humanists of this century Corliss Lamont and Sidney Hook had
very tenuous relationships with Marxism. Although these men
traveled down very divergent paths, they had much in common;
both were students of John Dewey, for example, and both
became exponents of pragmatic naturalism. Neither can be said
to have advanced the connection between Marxism and their
pragmatist-influenced humanism in any lasting manner. Yet their
cases tell us much about what has gone wrong in the many
encounters between the two traditions thus far.
Marxism and Secular Humanism 195
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Lamont wrote on humanism from a point of view in line with
the main currents of Anglo-American thought. At the same time,
he called himself a socialist, as defined by Soviet standards, and
made common cause financially and intellectually with Marxists,
although not necessarily with Marxism (Lamont 1974, xii). In
fact, Lamont shows little respect for integral aspects of Marxist
theory, such as dialectical logic, which he often attacked as
incoherent. Lamont seems never to have understood the unity of
elements within Marxist thought. For example, in a critique of
the Marxist philosopher Howard Selsam, Lamont claims that
while Marxist economic and social theory had made unique and
important contributions to modern thought, we may dismiss
dialectics as offering nothing of originality ontologically or epistemologically (86). This ignores the question of whether Marxist
dialectics is primarily involved in such areas, and, more importantly, it misunderstands that Marxism has only been able to
make unique contributions in other areas with the aid of the dialectical methodology by which it arrives at its conclusions.
An example of why this method is important can be taken
from Lamont’s own writings on the subject of religion and
Marxism. In the late 1930s, Lamont engaged in an interesting
exchange with the British Marxist scientist Joseph Needham
over the way to attract religious people to socialism. At one point
in his discussion, Lamont argues that the matter is complicated
by a problem of language. The difficulty lies in Marxism’s insistence on using the term materialist to describe its worldview.
Lamont calls this term objectionable to religious-minded persons
because “in the English speaking world the term materialism is
associated with the crass worship of material objects” (Lamont
1937, 497). As a solution, he suggests that Marxists use the more
pleasant sounding “socialist humanism” to describe their
outlook.
This may seem like a harmless quibble, but it is indicative of
a very undialectical approach to this problem. We cannot raise
consciousnesses by deception. There is a qualitative difference
between what is connoted by the term materialist and the term
humanist, and thus they are not interchangeable. This is not the
main point, however, and the problem of language that Lamont
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identifies is much more complex than his suggestion implies. A
central contradiction of bourgeois society is exposed here: in a
society ruled by the fetishism of commodities, many still seek
consolation in a spiritualist ideology that renounces the very ideals essential to the nature of that society.
The real confusion in this discussion lies with those who
would reject the idea of worshiping objects, but who are then
willing to do nothing to change the reality that underlies this
worship, except in the comforting spirituality of their own
minds. This contradiction embodies the very dialectical logic of
the unity of opposites that Lamont dismisses as useless for furthering our understanding. As a result of his methodological
blindness, Lamont ventures a cure for a problem he has not yet
properly diagnosed.
In terms of his practical political commitments, Lamont did
represent one of the most advanced attempts by a secular humanist thinker at a convergence with Marxism. Nonetheless, his
disregard of the methodological integrity of Marxist theory was,
I believe, counterproductive in not allowing him to advance the
philosophical unity of the two traditions. Hook’s case is even
more problematic. In the period of his most significant philosophical output, from the early 1930s to the mid 1940s, Hook
made original and suggestive contributions to both Marxism and
humanism. Yet his originality and usefulness in both areas
seemed to collapse as he became preoccupied with renouncing
his former political and philosophical commitments to
Marxism.10 Nevertheless, leaving aside Hook’s famous attempt
to connect Marxism with Deweyian pragmatism, if we look at
his work from this period, his analysis of religion remains interesting.
In a series of essays in the early 1940s, Hook sought to refute
the idea promoted by a growing number of intellectuals that the
great crises of the modern world (war, poverty, totalitarianism),
called for a renewal of religious conviction. Hook calls this “a
failure of nerve” on the part of otherwise intelligent persons to
defend modern knowledge. He refutes the idea that religious
dogma advances ethical, philosophical, or scientific concepts in
any positive manner, by showing that the same religious
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doctrines have been used with equal certainty the world over to
defend fascism, democracy, or theocratic authoritarianism (Hook
1961, 82–83). As to the actual integrity of religion itself, Hook
argues that by the most exacting logical standards, the existence
of God is a hypothesis of exceptionally low probability. In addition he shows that most of the leading theologians of our time,
such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, are virtual atheists
defending a generally fallacious concept of religious truth that
reduces the idea of God to a moral imperative or a psychological
need (133). Hook calls for a renewed commitment to scientific
knowledge, critical intelligence, and democratic socialism as the
only means of dealing with the dilemmas of our age (101–2).
In his later years, however, Hook abandoned such insights in
favor of a forty-year career as an apologist for the Cold War and
U.S. imperialism. In the decade before his death in 1989, Hook
was making common cause with such proponents of political
reaction as Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr. men
whose religious and political views Hook (still a secular humanist) should have viewed as absurd and dangerous. Hook did
make occasional asides against the religious Right, and continued to call himself a social democrat, but his writings in this
period lack the vigor, persistence, and originality of his works
when his humanist commitments were linked with Marxism.11
Conclusion
It is against this record of lost engagements, misunderstandings, and promises unfulfilled that both Marxists and secular
humanists should continue to work. Our historical period is
increasingly becoming one of heightened political reaction and
rampant irrationalism, with the growth of Kurtz’s “transcendental temptation” daily evident in all our popular media. What is
needed is the emergence of significant public intellectuals who
can combine the most sophisticated elements of Marxist and
humanist theory with a persuasive and popular appeal that replicates the success of the best figures of the freethought tradition.
The overview presented here is intended to provide the necessary
arguments to show why this should be so. That such a convergence has not yet become prominent remains a major gap in our
198 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT
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social, philosophical, and political life, but with the revival of
discussions in this area perhaps we need not think of this convergence as being very far off.
Department of Political Science
California State University, Long Beach
NOTES
1. It is interesting, given this opinion, to point out that two of the most
respected figures in contemporary skepticism and humanism, the late astronomer Carl Sagan and the biologist Stephen Jay Gould, both have expressed
positive attitudes toward Marxism. However, Sagan’s position was more
implicit, as in his naming of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution (1932)
as a pivotal book in shaping his politics. See Sagan 1995, 414–15. Gould, on
the other hand, has made quiet explicit defenses of Marxism, including
defenses of Engels’s stature as a scientific thinker and of the usefulness of dialectical categories in scientific analysis. See Gould 1977, 210–11 and 1987,
153–54.
2. It should be pointed out that misunderstanding cannot account for all
opposition between secular humanists and Marxists, for many humanists
approach secularism from a libertarian perspective that is incompatible with
Marxism.
3. Bhaskar’s method has evolved over the years from a simple defense of
scientific realism, to a growing convergence with Marxism, to a full embrace of
the dialectical tradition, of which he argues Marxism is the most advanced representative. In its simplest form, dialectical critical realism argues that scientific
knowledge is not dependent on the accumulation of facts that either verify or
falsify hypotheses. Nor is it simply based on the successful justification of recognized paradigms; instead, it is the successful overcoming of socially imposed
limits on understanding through the mastery of the reality of the nonsocial
world that makes knowledge scientific. Critical realist science is associated
with Marxism because it is ontologically transformational, rather than
reificationist (as in positivism), or voluntarist (as in historicism), and epistemologically relationalist, rather than individualist (empiricism), or collectivist
(idealism). Bhaskar is a difficult technical philosopher, and this summary,
taken from his magnum opus, Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (1993), cannot
do justice to this mentally exhausting work. Andrew Collier has made a valiant
attempt at simplifying this project (1994).
4. Hook’s reputation as a Marxist thinker has been obscured by his long
career as a Cold War crusader. The chief contemporary defender of the importance of the young Marxist Hook is Christopher Phelps, with a full-scale
reevaluation (1997). For a more critical, but still sympathetic view, see Alan
Wald 1987. Wald is especially insightful in exploring the lack of candor and
intellectual rigor that went into Hook’s break with Marxism.
Marxism and Secular Humanism 199
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5. An excellent critique of Niebuhr’s theology, focusing on his theory of
religious truth, is found in Walter Kaufmann’s Critique of Religion and Philosophy (1958). Kaufmann argues that rather than a fulfillment, Niebuhr’s prophetic religion is the outright antithesis of the ethic of Jesus in being aggressive
and unprudential (298). He concludes that Niebhur’s theology is a contrived,
erudite rationalization in which his convictions come first and his scholarship
second (303). Thus, for Niebuhr, religion becomes amazingly flexible in being
able to adapt to whatever shifting (secular) position he happens to be defending.
6. Calverton’s theory of religion is presented in full in his 1934 Passing of
the Gods. This work is an ambitious example in the field of Marxist studies of
religion. Though, empirically the book shows the limits of its time, it combines
a sociological and psychological theory of religion with a political critique of
the practices of religious groups that is still of interest.
7. A useful summary of the opposition religion has advanced against scientific progress is Bertrand Russell’s Religion and Science (1934). In the
introduction to a recent reissue of this work, Michael Ruse reminds readers that
positions such as Russell’s violent opposition to religion, should be distinguished from those who would merely separate religion and science as different
realms of knowledge (Ruse 1997). I would argue that Marxism takes neither
position, but seeks to overcome religion by scientifically studying the roots of
religious consciousness, while at the same time addressing their manifestations
in contemporary society. This can only be done by taking the ontological and
ethical questions religion claims to answer seriously, a point many positivists
like Russell seem to ignore (see for example, chapter 9 in Religion and
Science).
8. Interestingly, one of the leading contemporary atheist thinkers, the philosopher Kai Nielson, is also a Marxist. However, his work in both fields seems
separate and it cannot be said he has advanced any specifically Marxist theory
of atheism. This perhaps might be due to his commitment to analytic philosophy. Compare, for example, his 1990 Ethics Without God with his 1988
Marxism and the Moral Point of View.
9. Robert Ingersoll (1833–1899) remains one of the great forgotten figures
of the American past. Known as a powerful voice against religious dogma, he
was also a champion of racial justice, women’s equality, and civil liberties. A
good selection of his nearly intoxicating eloquence is found in a volume edited
by Roger E. Greeley (1990).
10. Hook’s posthumous collection of essays, Convictions (1990), is dominated by antileft polemics against affirmative action, multiculturalism, and radical critiques of U.S. history. Yet, Hook’s own stated “convictions” in favor of
social democracy and secular humanism are (notably) nearly imperceptible.
11. Those interested in Hook’s drift to the right, as well as his comradely
relations with the icons of modern reaction, can read his own defense of these
actions in his autobiography, Out of Step (1987). In many ways, Hook
condemns himself. For example, in a section where he defends his votes for
Ronald Reagan, Hook claims that he had no trouble with this (as a socialist),
200 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT
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because, with no real expertise in economic theory, he had no specific critique
of Reaganomics (590)! Such galling disingenuousness seems hardly worth the
effort.
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MacIntyre, Alasdair C. 1978 [1971]. Against the self-images of the ages:
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Nielson, Kai. 1988. Marxism and the moral point of view. Boulder, Colo.:
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. 1990. Ethics without God. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
Phelps, Christopher. 1997. Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and pragmatist. Ithaca,
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Ruse, Michael. 1997. Introduction to Russell 1997.
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Commentary
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Another View of Chomsky
Michael Parenti
In the April 1999 Monthly Review (50, no. 11:40–47), Robert
McChesney gives what amounts to an encomium to Noam
Chomsky. McChesney credits the MIT professor with (a) leading
the battle for democracy against neoliberalism, (b) demonstrating
“the absurdity of equating capitalism with democracy” (44), and
(c) being the first to expose the media’s complicity with the
ruling class. I would suggest that in these several areas credit for
leading the way goes to the generations of Marxist writers and
other progressive thinkers who fought the good fight well before
Chomsky made his substantial and much appreciated contributions.
More important is the question of Chomsky’s politics.
McChesney says that Chomsky can be “characterized as an anarchist or, perhaps more accurately, a libertarian socialist” (43).
“Libertarian socialist” is a sweeping designation, safely covering
both sides of the street. Of course, the ambiguity is not
McChesney’s but Chomsky’s. As far as I know, Chomsky has
never offered a clear explication of his anarcho-libertariansocialist ideology. That is to say, he has never explained to us
how it would manifest itself in organized political struggle or
actual social construction.
Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 12, no. 2 (1999)
203
204 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT
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McChesney says that Noam Chomsky has been a persistent
“opponent and critic of Communist and Leninist political states
and parties” (43). I would add that, as a “critic,” Chomsky has
yet to offer a systematic critique of existing Communist parties
and states. (Not that many others have.) Here is a sampling of
Chomsky’s views on Communism and Leninism:
In an interview in Perception (March/April 1996), Chomsky
tells us: “The rise of corporations was in fact a manifestation of
the same phenomena that led to Fascism and Bolshevism, which
sprang out of the same totalitarian soil.” Like Orwell and most
bourgeois opinion makers and academics, Chomsky treats Communism and fascism as totalitarian twins, offering no class analysis of either, except to assert that they are both rooted in some
unspecified way to today’s corporate domination.
In Z Magazine (October 1995), four years after the Soviet
Union had been overthrown, Chomsky warns us of “left intellectuals” who try to “rise to power on the backs of mass popular
movements” and “then beat the people into submission. . . . You
start off as basically a Leninist who is going to be part of the Red
bureaucracy. You see later that power doesn’t lie that way, and
you very quickly become an ideologist of the Right. . . . We’re
seeing it right now in the Soviet Union [sic]. The same guys who
were communist thugs two years back, are now running banks
and [are] enthusiastic free marketeers and praising America.”
In its choice of words and ahistorical crudity, this statement is
rather breathtaking. The Leninist “communist thugs” did not
“very quickly” switch to the right after rising to power. For more
than seventy years, they struggled in the face of momentous
Western capitalist and Nazi onslaughts to keep the Soviet system
alive. To be sure, in the USSR’s waning days, many like Boris
Yeltsin crossed over to capitalism’s ranks, but other Reds continued to resist free-market incursions at great cost to themselves,
many meeting their deaths during Yeltsin’s violent repression of
the Russian parliament in 1993.
In the same Perception interview cited above, Chomsky
offers another embarrassingly ill-informed comment about
Leninism: “Western and also Third World intellectuals were
attracted to the Bolshevik counterrevolution [sic] because
Commentary 205
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Leninism is, after all, a doctrine that says that the radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and to run their countries
by force, and that is an idea which is rather appealing to intellectuals.” Here Chomsky fashions a cartoon image of ruthless
intellectuals to go along with his cartoon image of ruthless
Leninists. They do not want the power to end hunger, they
merely hunger for power.
In his book Powers and Prospects (1996, 83), Chomsky
begins to sound like Ronald Reagan when he announces that
Communism “was a monstrosity,” and “the collapse of tyranny”
in Eastern Europe and Russia is “an occasion for rejoicing for
anyone who values freedom and human dignity.” Tell that to the
hungry pensioners and child prostitutes in Gorky Park. I treasure
freedom and human dignity as much as anyone, yet I find no
occasion for rejoicing. The post-Communist societies do not
represent a net gain for such values. If anything, what we are
witnessing is a colossal victory for gangster capitalism in the former Soviet Union, the strengthening of the most retrograde
forms of global capitalism and economic inequality around the
world, a heartless and unrestrained increase in imperialistic
aggression, and a serious setback for revolutionary liberation
struggles everywhere.
We should keep in mind that Chomsky’s political underdevelopment is shared by many on the left whose critical views
of “corporate America” represent their full ideological grasp of
the political world. Be he an anarcho-libertarian or libertariansocialist or anarcho-syndicalist-socialist or just an anarchist,
Chomsky appeals to many of the young and not so young. For he
can evade all the hard questions about organized struggle, the
search for a revolutionary path, the need to develop and sustain a
mass resistance, the necessity of developing armed socialist state
power that can defend itself against the capitalist counterrevolutionary onslaught, and all the attendant problems, abuses,
mistakes, victories, defeats, and crimes of Communist revolutionary countries and their allies.
What we used to say about the Trotskyites can apply to the
Chomskyites: they support every revolution except those that
succeed. (Cuba might be the exception. Chomsky usually leaves
206 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT
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that country unmentioned in his sideswipes at existing or onceexisting Communist countries.) Most often, organized workingclass struggles and vanguard parties are written off by many on
the left (including Chomsky) as “Stalinist,” a favorite, obsessional pejorative made all the more useful by remaining forever
undefined; or “Leninist,” which is Chomsky’s code word for
Communist governments and movements that have actually
gained state power and fought against the west to stay in power.
Through all this label-slinging, no recognition is given to the
horrendous battering such countries and movements endure from
the Western imperialists. No thought is given to the enormously
distorting impact of capitalist counterrevoltuionary power upon
the development of existing and once-existing Communist
governments, nor the evils of international capitalism that the
Communists and their allies were able to hold back, evils that are
becoming more and more apparent to us today.
Bereft of a dialectical grasp of class power and class struggle,
Chomsky and others have no critical defense against the ideological anti-Communism that inundates the Western world, especially the United States. This is why, when talking about the corporations, Chomsky can sound as good as Ralph Nader, and
when talking about existing Communist movements and society,
he can sound as bad as any right-wing pundit.
In sum, I cannot join McChesney in heaping unqualified
praise upon Noam Chomsky’s views. When Chomsky departs
from his well-paved road of anticorporate exposé and holds forth
on Communism and Leninism, he shoots from the hip with
disappointingly facile and sometimes incomprehensible
pronunciamentos. We should expect something better from our
“leading icon of the Left.”
Berkeley, California
Michael Parenti’s most recent books are Dirty Truths, Blackshirts and Reds and
America Besieged, all published by City Lights, San Francisco.
replace this page with page 207
MARXIST FORUM
Nature, Society, and Thought initiated with vol. 6, no. 1 a special
section called “Marxist Forum” to publish programmatic materials from political parties throughout the world that are inspired
by the communist idea. This section makes available to our readers (insofar as space restrictions permit) a representative cross
section of approaches by these parties and their members to contemporary problems, domestic and international. Our hope is to
stimulate thought and discussion of the issues raised by these
documents, and we invite comments and responses from readers.
An Appeal for Protest against Biohazard in
Tokyo and “Science without Conscience”
Shingo Shibata
Background
In a previous paper entitled “Toward Prevention of
Biohazards: For Human Rights in the Age of Emerging New
Pathogens and Biotechnology” (1997a), I explained the background of the issues considered in this paper. They might be outlined as follows: The origin and history of the Japanese National
Institute of Health (JNIH), originally established in 1947, and its
successor, the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID),
renamed in 1997.
The theoretical background of the civil rights campaign
against the choice of site for the JINH-NIID. Located at a small
site in one of the most populated residential areas in Tokyo, the
JNIH-NIID deals with various kinds of dangerous pathogens,
genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and a large quantity of
organic solvents and radioisotopes, as well as tens of thousands
of laboratory animals. The site is adjacent to many dwellings and
housing complexes, two welfare facilities for handicapped persons; Waseda University with tens of thousands of students; a
major hospital; and the legally designated sites for refugees in
case of emergency, major earthquakes, or fires.
The JNIH made public its plan to move to this site in July
1986. Since January 1987, together with my colleagues and
friends, I have continued to raise many questions and related
issues about the safety and location of the JNIH with its directors
Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 12, no. 2 (1999)
209
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and have requested them to reply. To our surprise, they did not
reply. Moreover, the JNIH took a strong position against
us residents, handicapped people, and Waseda University
virtually telling us to “shut up!” Meanwhile, the mayor and the
city assembly of Shinjuku-ku, a ward with a population of about
270,000, have continued to urge the JNIH to refrain from constructing the laboratory. In spite of all these protests and appeals,
in December 1988, the JNIH dared to mobilize the riot police
and to begin its construction backed by force.
In response, I, together with two hundred colleagues, residents, and thirty Waseda University professors, brought a lawsuit
against the JNIH, seeking to have its construction transferred out
of our residential area and its experiments in this area halted.
At the Tokyo District Court, the JNIH contended that it was
“completely safe” because its biosafety conditions were in compliance with the regulations recommended by the World Health
Organization’s Laboratory Biosafety Manual (1983, 1993). We
completely refuted such arguments and proved that the JNIH
was dangerous to the residents, handicapped persons, and students and staff of Waseda University, as well as the public. Since
our suit began, almost ten years have passed. Our arguments
have convinced the public of the justice of our cause. As a result,
the mayor and the City Assembly of Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, have
continued to ask the JNIH halt its experiments. Even the Minister of the Environment Agency told the Diet that he did not think
that the location of the JNIH was “appropriate.”
In 1995–1996 the misdeeds of the JNIH were under fire from
the public and mass media (Shibata 1997a). One such misdeed
was the infection of many hemophiliacs with HIV through JNIHapproved blood products. Nevertheless, its director general,
Shudo Yamazaki, openly declared that he would never apologize
to the victims and nation for these misdeeds. In the face of the
public denunciation, however, the Ministry of Health and Welfare could not but rename “the JNIH” as “the NIID” on 1 April
1997.
In 1997 we proposed that the court invite a British microbiologist of international repute, Dr. C. H. Collins, the coordinating editor of the WHO biosafety manual and another WHO
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publication (1997), to submit his inspection report to the court.
As a result, the NIID could not but reluctantly accept our proposal, with the condition that it invite two U.S. scientists, V. R.
Oviatt and Dr. J. Y. Richmond. Mr. Oviatt was the Head of the
Environmental Health and Safety Division at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, and is retired in
Scotland. Dr. Richmond is Director, Office of Health and Safety,
the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in Atlanta. In order to
make the inspection fair and balanced, Dr. Collins recommended
to us that his colleague, Dr. David A. Kennedy, be another member of the British inspection team. Dr. Kennedy was a principal
technology officer at the Medical Devices Agency, Department
of Health, in the United Kingdom, from 1968 to 1996, as well as
a WHO advisor on medical devices. He is Visiting Fellow at the
Cranfield Biomedical Centre, Cranfield University, U.K.
The NIID insisted that Drs. Collins and Kennedy be allowed
to enter the laboratory on only one day, 18 June 1997, that the
number of our interpreters be restricted to one, and that the facilities available for the inspection by Drs. Collins and Kennedy
would also be restricted. The NIID went further, forbidding the
tape recording of all oral explanations given during the inspection, as well as any photography on the site. Essentially, the
NIID wanted to conduct its own inspection, rejecting that of Drs.
Collins and Kennedy. Thus, the NIID dictated nearly all the conditions of the inspection, rudely rejecting what should have been
a free inspection by Drs. Collins and Kennedy. Nevertheless,
under such restrictions, the international inspection by the two
groups of scientists took place on 18 June 1997.
The deadline for the plaintiffs and the defendant to submit
each report of their invited inspectors to the court was 29 August
1997. On 28 August, we submitted to the court the report by Drs.
Collins and Kennedy (hereafter, C/K) along with its Japanese
translation (Collins and Kennedy 1997). The NIID received them
from the court the next day. But it was twelve days later than the
deadline, on 10 September, that the NIID submitted to the court
the report by Oviatt and Richmond (hereafter O/R) and its Japanese translation (Oviatt and Richmond 1997a).
212 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT
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This suggested that there was a possibility for the leading
staff of the NIID to have faxed the C/K report to Oviat and Richmond so that they would have the opportunity of modifying their
original report to counteract statements in the C/K report.
It was also strange that the O/R report was undated. In my
opinion, O/R may have omitted the date intentionally.
Our civil rights campaign against the JNIH-NIID site has
been widely reported in Japan. There have been over one thousand articles reported in the mass media as well as over three
hundred articles published in many leading journals. There have
been more than ten books, apart from my own three books, that
warned the public of the danger of the relocated JNIH-NIID.
Almost all of them were critical of the JNIH-NIID, while very
few favored it. Moreover, leading overseas scientific journals,
including Nature and Science, paid appropriate attention to our
campaign (Hesse 1992; Heim 1992; Swinbanks 1992; Shibata
1993; Normile 1998; Collins and Kennedy 1998). It can therefore be said that the hazardous location issue of the JNIH-NIID
has been brought before the world court of the scientific community and public opinion.
Accusation of NIID’s forgery; denunciation
of the conspiracy of the two U.S. inspectors
Several months after the deadline that is, in March 1998 we
had an opportunity to compare the signatures of Oviatt and
Richmond with those in the O/R report. They seemed to be quite
different.
You are asked to examine the signatures on the opposite
page. The signatures O-1 and R-1 are copies of the signatures in
the letters of Oviatt (8 November 1995) and of Richmond (9
November 1995), each of which was addressed to Dr. Shudo
Yamazaki, Director General of the NIID. We had the copies of
these letters made from the originals that were submitted to the
court as the defendant’s documentary evidences No. 43 and No.
45.
In contrast, the signatures O-2 and R-2 are copies of the signatures from their report.
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I think that the signatures O-1 and R-1 must be genuine,
because they are each from letters of Oviatt and Richmond. But
it did not seem even to the eyes of untrained observers that each
of signatures O-1 and O-2, as well as each of signatures R-1 and
R-2, was signed by the same person. The signatures are copies
of the signatures in the letters of Oviatt (8 November 1995) and
of Richmond (9 November 1995), each of which was addressed
to Dr. Shudo Yamazaki, Director General of the NIID. We had
the copies of these letters made from the originals that were submitted to the court as the defendant’s documentary evidences
No. 43 and No. 45.
Therefore, we asked a leading expert on handwriting analysis
to give us an expert opinion on the signatures. He was Mr.
Kazuyoshi Ichikawa, a former chief researcher of handwriting
analysis at the Institute of Police Science attached to the National
Police Agency and then a lecturer of forensic medicine at the
Nippon University. He carefully examined the signatures in
question and reported that they were surely forged by another
person.
On this basis, on 19 June 1998, we accused some leading staff
of the NIID of the crime of forgery of an important legal
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document before the Tokyo Prosecutors’ Office. At this stage,
the Japanese mass media generally did not give much coverage
to the case. Only after the police have arrested an accused or the
prosecutors’ office has brought an accusation against the accused
does the mass media give big coverage to such an accusation.
But in this case, the daily Tokyo Shimbun (20 June 1998)
gave major coverage to our accusation. According to the newspaper article, the NIID reportedly refused to answer questions
raised by its reporter. A few months later, the 7 September 1998
issue of AERA, one of Asahi Shimbun’s most prestigious weeklies in Japan, published a detailed report under the title “The
NIID forged the signatures of two U.S. scientists.”
On 2 July 1998, the Tokyo Prosecutors’ Office officially
accepted our accusation. As the crime was committed behind
closed doors at the NIID, we could not identify the name(s) of
the criminal(s), but we suggested that Dr. Shudo Yamazaki,
Director General of the NIID and/or Dr. Takeshi Kurata,
Director of the Department of Pathology of the NIID, were
surely involved in the crime.
There is no doubt that such a forgery should be considered
not only as one of the most serious crimes committed against the
court by a governmental scientific institute, but also as one of the
most shameful crimes against all scientists here and abroad. It
should be regarded not only as one of the most infamous scandals in the Japanese history of jurisprudence and science but of
the world as well.
Immediately after the disclosure of the crime of forgery committed by the NIID, we sent a fax message of inquiry about the
signatures to both Mr. Oviatt and Dr. Richmond. We only asked
them whether or not the signatures in question were their own.
They never replied.
A few weeks later, we called Oviatt and Richmond and asked
their opinion on the forgery. To our amazement, they replied
without flinching that they had, in fact, allowed the leading staff
of the NIID to sign their names. Oviatt said that he was writing
to the Tokyo District Court (TDC) to testify that he certainly had
allowed the NIID to sign his name. Richmond also said that the
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same report, this time with their “genuine signatures and new
dates,” would be submitted to the TDC.
On the 2 October 1998, having been forced to respond to our
accusation, the NIID could not but submit to the TDC a copy of
the “new” report of its inspection, this time with what it called
“true” signatures of O/R, together with copies of Oviatt’s letter
of 30 June and of Richmond’s letter of 1 July 1998, both of
which were addressed to Dr. Kurata. By virtue of these
submissions, O/R confessed that the crime of forgery had been
committed by Kurata with their approval.
As to the newly submitted report, the signatures in question
seemed to be “true,” but it was strange that, again, neither of the
two signatures was dated. (Oviatt is retired in Scotland, while
Richmond lives in Georgia, in the United States.) I have already
suggested the reason why the previous and undated version of
the O/R report was submitted to the TDC 12 days later than the
deadline.
Richmond, in his above letter, called their report “the report
dated June 18, 1997.” Such a date is nothing but a fiction,
because it is the date that the inspections by the two different
groups of the inspectors that is, the British group on behalf of
us, the plaintiffs as well as the U.S. one on behalf of the NIID,
the defendant took place at the laboratories of the NIID. The
fact that there were still no dates of the signatures in the new version of the O/R report suggested that it was impossible for O/R
to date the report. This fact again cast doubt on the so-called
“true” signatures of O/R.
In the forged version of the report, Richmond titled himself as
“Director, Office of Health and Safety, WHO Collaborating
Centre for Applied Biosafety Programmes and Training[,]
Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.” But in the new version, he deleted these titles. This means that he intentionally
assumed that the official and prestigious title used in the forged
version would deceive the TDC, the plaintiffs, the public, and
the scientific community here and abroad. Nevertheless, he
neither gave the reasons for nor apologized for his deception
about the title to the TDC and others.
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The letter of Oviatt deserves to be cited: “This letter affirms
that I asked and authorized you to reproduce my signature and
affix it to the report” (emphasis added).
The letter of Richmond also deserves to be cited: “I gave you
permission to‘sign my name’ to the final report. . . . I understand
at the time that there was a need to file the report in a timely
manner and that there was not time to get our signatures”
(emphasis added).
It is noteworthy that the word “final” report suggests that
there was a prior report, and that the final one was completed by
Kurata. It was finally printed using an NIID printer. So it
appears that Oviatt honestly wrote that he asked Kurata to
“affix” his reproduced signature to the final report.
In a similar way, Richmond also confessed, “there was not
time to get our signatures.” If the final one was completed and
printed by O/R themselves, they would have never written in
such a way, “there was not time to get our signatures.”
So the letters of O/R themselves confessed that the final text
was completed and printed by the NIID, and that Kurata, who
had to “get our (O/R) signatures,” asked permission to
“reproduce my (Oviatt’s) signature” or to “sign my (Richmond’s) name” from O/R, and that then, O/R gave him
“permission.” In this case, there is no doubt that Kurata initiated
the request “to get their signatures.” Responding to the request,
then, O/R gave him the “permission.” If not, O/R should have
never used the word “permission.”
Richmond confirmed, “there was a need to file the report in a
timely manner” and “there was not time to get our signatures.”
Nevertheless, the O/R report was submitted to the TDC twelve
days later than the deadline, that is, not in a timely manner. O/R
did not explain why, how, and when “there was not time.” I have
already explained how the wantonly secretive behavior was conspiratorially aided by O/R after the NIID had received the C/K
report, which was filed in a timely manner. Why didn’t O/R and
the NIID explain why “there was not time to get O/R signatures”
to the TDC and the public?
I believe it is clear how O/R were completely and miserably
caught in their own trap. Is there any value to scientific and
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documentary evidence in such an undated report containing the
so-called “true” signatures of O/R, accompanied with so unreasonably argued letters written by such self-styled coauthors?
Two principles of modern civil society: Juridical
considerations on the case of forgery by the NIID
and two U.S. inspectors
Several well-known important juridical principles are
accepted in modern civil society. The U.S. Declaration of
Independence asserts that we are endowed with the right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the right and duty
of revolution (Shibata 1977, 1987, and 1997b). In connection
with the subject of this paper, here I would like to draw attention
to two other important juridical principles of our society in
regard to world-wide accepted practice for the proper identification and submission of legal documentation. One is the correct
identification of the individual. Another is the proper dating of
documentation by the individual submitter.
As for the first principle, there should be no need to explain
its juridical implication. Modern civil society is based on mutual
respect for the dignity and identity of individual parties in any
legal proceeding. Without such a principle, modern civil jurisprudence in society could not exist. But how is it possible for
any person to express his or her own dignity and identify oneself
an individual personality to another person? How is it possible in
the legal process for each person to recognize and/or identify
another person as an individual personality? As I understand it, it
is possible only with and/or through signature of his/her own
name upon any documentation submitted to a court as part of
any legal procedure.
As for the second principle, as a matter of fact, Americans,
Europeans, Japanese, and many other people always date any
documents and letters when they sign their names on them, especially if these writings are to serve a legal purpose. Why? The
reason is that by doing so, they want and/or are asked to confirm
the legal validity of their signatures for the purposes of establishing their legal rights, duties, and responsibilities. Therefore, it
would be no exaggeration to say that any undated signature is
218 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT
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legally invalid in modern civil society. Indeed, there is, in the
modern world, very little official or legal documentation upon
which signature(s) of the submitting parties/party remain(s)
undated. In fact, modern civil society is nothing but a society
controlled and registered with references to and indications of
time. Therefore, from a legal point of view, to intentionally omit
either of these two principles undermines the universally
accepted documentary content essential to the conduct of proper
legal procedure in our modern civil society.
Accordingly, an act of forgery of signature(s) on any official
or private document as well as an act of its use in the legal process should be considered as a serious crime and punished
severely by the criminal law. In Japan, the act of forgery of private documentation and an act of its use are indictable offenses,
carrying a maximum five years imprisonment according to Articles 160 and 161 of the Criminal Law.
To my knowledge, however, there are very few juridical studies on the implications of forged signatures and dating as these
pertain to the accepted juridical principles of the modern civil
society. I submit that this scarcity exists due to the overwhelmingly accepted practice of signing and dating documentation
involved in the legal process.
In light of these principles, what are the juridical implications
of the forgery acts on the part of Dr. Kurata, Mr. Oviatt, and Dr.
Richmond?
Of course, Kurata would justify his behavior by simply insisting that he is not guilty of the forgery because he was
“permitted” to “reproduce their signatures” by O/R, while O/R
would reply that they also should not be denounced for the conspiracy either because they, too, had “permitted” Kurata to
“reproduce their signatures.”
In reply to such arguments, I would like to remind them of
the principles explained above that in our modern civil society,
it is only an independent citizen who is qualified to sign his or
her own name. No citizen is allowed to sign the name of another
person without following proper legal procedure.
Furthermore, I believe it is essential to have answers to the
following questions:
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Why did not Oviatt ask Kurata to “sign the name of Kurata
on behalf of Mr. Oviatt”? Doing so represents the common sense
and morals of any citizen, including scientists, who follows
proper legal procedure in any modern civil society. Nevertheless, Oviatt, ignoring common procedure, authorized Kurata to
“reproduce my signature.” Why did O/R allow Kurata to sign
“Vinson R. Oviatt and Jonathan Y. Richmond,” not “Takeshi
Kurata on behalf of Oviatt and Richmond”? By letting Kurata
sign the signatures “Vinson R. Oviatt and Jonathan Y. Richmond,” O/R submitted the conspiratorially produced report to
the court in order to pretend that it was a “genuine” report written only by O/R.
Even if O/R had allowed Kurata to reproduce their signatures,
that does not justify the latter signing “Vinson R. Oviatt and Jonathan Y. Richmond,” because it is clear that Kurata is not Oviatt
and Richmond. Whether O/R permitted it or not, it was a crime
of forgery for Kurata to sign the signatures of O/R, because by
doing so, he intentionally deceived the court, the plaintiffs, lawyers, scientists, and the public into taking the bogus report as a
genuine one.
Thus, the TDC had been deceived into accepting the bogus
report as genuine documentary evidence. We ourselves had been
deceived into believing that it was a genuine one. So, we made
many copies of it and distributed them among scientists and editors of scientific journals, here and abroad, asking for their comments. Therefore, not only we, but also many scientists here and
abroad, including Drs. Collins and Kennedy, have been deceived
into reading it as a genuine one.
To refute the arguments of Kurata and C/R, it would be
enough to offer the following example:
Suppose a buyer A bought a valuable thing from C and paid
for it with a check with a forged signature of his friend B with
the approval of B, and in such a way that A and B together committed the crime of fraud against C. One year later, C found the
signature forged and the check voided, and accused A of a crime
of fraud before a prosecutors’ office.
As a result, only after having been forced by the accusation,
A asked B to give him a check with “true” signature of B but
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without a date, and then A submitted the check to C, along with
a letter from B which says: “At that time I gave A permission to
reproduce my signature” because “there was not time for A to
get my signature.” And, without any apology, A asks C to accept
the check, shouting to C and the concerned prosecutor, “You are
wrong. I am not guilty of the crime of forgery!” Do you think
that C should accept such a check?
I am sure that nobody would support A’s argument. Anybody
would certainly contend that A and B must be accused of the
crimes of fraud and conspiracy which were committed against C.
Is there any difference between the crime committed by A
and B and the crime of forgery committed by Kurata aided by
O/R? Nobody would dare to say that A and B as well as Kurata
and O/R are not guilty of the crime. Furthermore, anybody
would surely say that the crime committed by Kurata and O/R is
more serious and dangerous to the public and humankind as a
whole than the one committed by A and B. The reasons are as
follows:
In this case, “A” is not only an institution of the government
of Japan, but also the governmental laboratory which deals with
emerging new pathogens and unknown genetically modified
organisms (GMOs), the danger and risk of which can only be
recognized through an infection among residents and the public.
Kurata, as the institute’s Director of the Department of Pathology, committed the crime of forgery of the institute’s safety and
environmental impact inspection report in order to deceive the
TDC, the plaintiffs, the public, and the scientific community.
“B” represents the two U.S. scientists. To repeat the above
description, one of them was the prestigious Head of the Environmental Health & Safety Division at the NIH, Bethesda, and
the other assumed the official and prestigious title as “Director,
Office of Health and Safety, WHO Collaborating Centre for
Applied Biosafety Programmes and Training [,] Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.” They conspired with Kurata
against “C,” that is, the TDC, the plaintiffs, the public, and the
scientific community in Japan, pretending “NIID poses no
biosafety threat to the outside surrounding community as a
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consequence of its work with infectious diseases” in one of the
most populated residential areas in the very center of Tokyo. Of
course, the O/R report did not submit any scientific proof for
such a pretension (Collins and Kennedy 1997a, Shibata 1997b).
Implications of the forgery for morals, science
of safety, public health, and human rights
As to the conspiracy of O/R, it is incredible that the two U.S.
scientists, who were asked by the court to submit an experts’
report on the inspection of the so-called “safety” condition in and
around the NIID, allowed the inspected laboratory to “reproduce
their signatures.” It is nothing but a shameful corruption among
scientists in the light of morals, science of safety, public health,
and human rights in our civil society.
It is again unbelievable that such well-reputed scientists as
Mr. Oviatt and Dr. Richmond could be implicated in these forgeries. Such behavior seriously harms the reputation of the U.S.
scientific community.
The conspiracy of Mr. Oviatt and Dr. Richmond, in conjunction with the NIID, leads one to wonder whether further phenomena of such shameful behavior exists elsewhere among U.S.
and Japanese laboratory scientists involved in the fields of infectious diseases, biotechnology, and science of safety.
The poor arguments in the letters of O/R reminded me of the
term “colonial science.” This term was used to characterize the
attitude of U.S. scientists to atomic survivors in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki by a U.S. science historian (Lindee 1994). Lindee, now
Professor of History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, studied the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) as
one of the Occupational Agencies of the U.S. Army. She also
studied the Japanese National Institute of Health (JNIH), the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki branches of which were set up in the
same rooms in the same buildings as the ABCC. The JNIH intimately cooperated with the ABCC in loyally following the U.S.
Army’s nontreatment policy toward survivors of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The ABCC was a typical example of “colonial science” institute. It was helped by the JNIH, the institute of
222 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT
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“persons of a relatively inferior caliber” (Lindee 1994), in dealing with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors as human guinea
pigs. The ABCC tried to collect information about the aftereffect
of the atomic radiation on these survivors in order to contribute
further toward the development of nuclear weaponry (Shibata
1996).
Do not the O/R reports with the forged signatures and the socalled “true” signatures of O/R, together with their two letters,
smell like “colonial science”? Does not the submission of forged
documentation display contempt for our judges, residents, the
public, and the scientific community while simultaneously
revealing O/R’s racist attitude of “colonial science”? How can
these scientists so arrogantly and unlawfully justify their crimes
of forgery and conspiracy before our court, public, and scientific
community?
Why did Dr. Kurata, as one of the leading staff of the NIID,
commit such a grave crime of forgery?
In this respect, it is necessary to understand the origin and
history of the JNIH-NIID. It was established on 21 May 1947 by
the order of the U.S. Occupation Forces. It was staffed with
many medical scientists who cooperated with the biological warfare (BW) crime committed by the Japanese Imperial Army during the period of its invasion of Asian and Pacific countries. All
directors general and almost all vice-directors general of the
JNIH, during the period from its establishment to the beginning
of the 1980s, were BW scientists. Thus, the JNIH inherited the
legacy of the BW forgery corps of medical scientists. The principle of their forgery morals has always been that “the end justifies
the means” (Williams and Wallace 1989; Shibata 1990, and
1997a; Gold 1996; Harris 1994 and 1995 the critique in Harris
1995 of the human experiments committed by the JNIH deserves
to be noted).
To cite from Lindee, the JNIH remained “an emphatic Occupation agency” throughout the Occupation. Not only that. The
JNIH continued to provide services to the ABCC from 1947
through 1975, and together they intimately cooperated to
infringe on the human rights of atomic survivors (Shibata 1996).
Biohazard in Tokyo 223
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Another of the hidden aims of the U.S. Occupation Forces,
which ordered the establishment of the JNIH, was to have it
cooperate with the U.S. Army’s 406th Medical Laboratory, an
Asian unit of the U.S. Army’s center of BW research institutes at
Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland. Unit 406 supervised and controlled the JNIH from its establishment through the middle of the
1960s. Many cooperative research projects between the JNIH
and the U.S. Army’s institutes can be documented from its establishment until the end of the 1980s. As a matter of fact, Dr.
Kurata himself was reportedly financed by one of these U.S.
Army’s institutes (Shibata 1997a).
In 1997, in face of wide public denunciation of its many misdeeds, the JNIH could not but change its tarnished name to the
NIID. But the unscientific, unethical, and inhumane tradition of
the BW scientists in the JNIH was not reformed, but simply and
directly inherited by the leading staff, including Dr. Kurata, of
the renamed NIID.
The NIID and Dr. Kurata have never apologized to the TDC
and the public for their crime of forgery. Not only that. In spite
of public denunciation, the NIID, in appreciation of the misdeeds
of Dr. Kurata, arrogantly promoted him to the post of its ViceDirector General on 1 April 1999! He is expected to become its
Director-General in a few years! Such is typical of the morals,
the science of safety, and the bioethics of the NIID.
As a proverb says, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Thus it
would be no exaggeration to say that O/R were purposely invited
by their colleagues in Japan to deliberately reveal their “colonial
science” before the eyes of our court, public, and scientists who,
alternatively and passionately, speak out for “independent science.” In this respect, the conspiracy of O/R and the NIID was
no accident. It deserves to be carefully studied as a textbook on
“colonial science” and as a blatant case of how science and scientists can both become corrupted.
What would occur if our court should happen to favor the
report conspiratorially produced by the NIID and O/R and to
ignore the scientific warning expressed by the Collins/Kennedy
report? Although it seems to be unlikely, it would predictably
encourage every development adverse not only to the new
224 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT
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regulations on the locations of laboratories of pathogens (WHO
1997) with which we can agree, but also the expected promotion
of the public health and improvement of biosafety in the NIID. It
would also disasterously encourage almost all other laboratories
of pathogens and GMOs to ignore legislative regulations against
the potential misconducts of these laboratories. Finally, it would
seriously undermine efforts to maintain strong environmental
protection in the age of emerging new pathogens and
biotechnology. We should never allow our courts to make these
terrible mistakes.
In the case of such an adverse ruling, we cannot deny that
there is a possibility that an outbreak of infectious disease with
an unknown new emerging pathogen and GMOs may occur.
Should this terrible event take place among residents around the
NIID at the very center of Tokyo and other laboratories, it is not
alarmist to predict that such an outbreak could possibly immediately cross borders and spread to all the corners of the world. As
previously experienced in the case of the HIV, E. coli O-157,
and so on, such scenarios have already occurred. Is there a more
serious threat to humankind in our age of newly emerging
pathogens?
As we saw in the BW crimes of Japanese medical scientists
and the cover-up of the crimes by their U.S. colleagues (Williams and Wallace 1989: Shibata 1990 and 1996: Harris 1994
and 1995), science without conscience is nothing but the corruption and destruction of science itself. We have just witnessed the
phantom of their second generation in the JNIH-NIID and O/R.
It is a grave warning for all people and the public who are concerned about the future of humankind in our age.
We have to redouble our energy to promote the science of
safety and biosafety, as well as morals, bioethics, public health,
and human rights in our age. Your kind help and expression of
deep concern would be greatly appreciated.
The author is grateful to Dr. C. H. Collins and Dr. D. A. Kennedy, who
kindly communicated their ideas to him. He is also grateful to Prof. Erik E.
Christy, who kindly read and improved the text in English. Any comments on
this paper would be appreciated. Communication to the author should be
addressed: 1-18-6 Toyama, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 1620052; Fax: 81-3-3232-
Biohazard in Tokyo 225
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1356; E-mail: <sshibata @mb.infoweb.ne.jp>. More detailed information about
the JNIH-NIID and our civil rights campaign against it is be available through
our website <http://village.infoweb.ne.jp/~yoken/>.
Emeritus, Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences
Hiroshima University
Chair, Civil Rights Campaign against
Wrong Location of JNIH-NIID
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